At the Edge of Eternity:part 3 of 'Empty Places'
by Lynne the Canuck
Summary: For the grown children of Leia and Han, the real battle is only beginning. Deprived of all they had come to rely on for guidance, they must face a wounded galaxy, and their own hideous ancestry, alone.


DISCLAIMER:  
This is a work of original fan fiction based on characters and situations created by George Lucas and copyrighted to Lucasfilm, Ltd.. The intent of this work is for the entertainment of fans of the middle trilogy of the Star Wars saga, and is not intended to garner payment in any form. This work may be copied, linked, or re-posted as long as this disclaimer accompanies any such action and the author is notified in writing. Comments are welcomed, but please use civility. Do not respond with viruses, profanity, or any other destructive correspondence.  
* * *  
This work is the *conclusion* to the trilogy that began with the fan fiction 'All the Empty Places You Walk' and continued in 'Song of the Crusader'. While it is not necessary to have read these two works to understand the events in ... At the Edge of Eternity, such prior reading will flesh out the details contained herein.   
  
  
STAR WARS: At the Edge of Eternity  
© 1998 by: Lynne Freels  
lynne@westies.com  
www.westies.com  
  
  
I really love the fog ... It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more ... It's the foghorn I hate. It won't let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back ... Only the past when you were happy is real.  
  
-- Eugene O'Neill  
Long Day's Journey into Night  
Act Two, Scene Three  
  
  
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities; it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril, we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.  
  
-- G'Kar (fictional character) 1 [1] Babylon 5 [1]"Z'Ha'Dum", from Babylon 5 (television series). Production #322. Originally aired 28 October 1996 (US). Series creator and this episode written by J. Michael Straczynski. ©1996 Babylonian Productions, Inc..  
  
  
  
PROLOGUE  
  
"I want you to find a secluded place near here. This is very important."   
The face instructing him was a stranger's, but what lived beneath the innocuous words found communion in the pain and despair that loosed a desperate grasp of protective innocence. No revelation padded back and forth beyond the paltry reach of his mind's understanding. All he was aware of was a primal need to be comforted; to be soothed by inarticulate mutterings of an unattainable simplicity.   
The mouth in the foreign face opened as if to say more, but instead of words, fire was excreted from deep within, licking the red lips as the seared features melted in excruciating slowness. The agony of the trapped soul was vented in one loud, final scream ...  
"Lights!" Someone instructed.   
The repugnance of the face that stalked his nights began to dissipate, replaced by its mimic, unscathed, as in the beginning of the nightmare. The mouth opened to speak, and he reacted, violently pushing the bearer of those features away. His own scream sounded alien to him, ricocheting off the walls in crippled parodies of fright.   
Only one thought managed to dig its way into cognisance: run.  
Consuming terror provoked his legs into motion, the panic of his headlong flight knocking something over, and then he was free, his body immersed in the night; his mind immersed in madness. He was invisible to all.  
  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER ONE  
  
BÀS, THE OUTER RIM  
  
Long fingers held the morsel of food almost daintily. Eating slowly, it analysed each sensation the action awakened. It was only three, no four or maybe five, weeks ago that business would not allow such luxuries as savouring a meal. In order to acquire more things to steal the fraction of time left for private indulgences, every action performed had to be better and more profitable than those of others. Every action had to excel under the most detailed of scrutinises. These, then, were the measures against which success was gaged.   
Within hours, monuments to lifetimes of sweat and anxiety were pulverised. The government's proclaimed neutrality and rumoured deals were no protection against a greed even the self-indulging citizenry of Bàs could not understand. For a while, all they had was each other and hope. It despaired that that was not enough to survive by. Indeed, within weeks, the co-operation and philanthropy needed to ensure equal chances for basic subsistence collapsed under the strain of change.  
It studied its food. With practice, it knew the right amount of pressure its fingers could apply before the hardened consistency of it crumbled in its hand. The slight tartness of the taste indicated that today's rations were less stale than those of yesterday. Although it could see spots of fuzzy grey mould sprouting from the morsel, it no longer could afford to pick them off, and ate them as well. There would be no more food until tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. The deliveries of late were becoming sporadic and inconsistent.   
It heard that the New Republic had sent medical personnel and food relief. It had also heard that these aid workers and their supplies had been hindered in their humanitarian efforts; that most of the food was now in the hands of social parasites.  
Last week, there had been no rations for three days, and when the transport did arrive, the food was spoiled. So, it had learned to take great measured pleasure from eating, while continuously scanning for any fingers that thought to snatch the delicacy from its mouth.  
Shivering in the cold, it tightened the cocoon of blankets it had stolen from a crumpled husk that use to be a store. It shook its appendage in frustration: it was no better than the gangs that roamed the streets. They were getting worse, these wretches, regressing further after sunset. Colder and more bestial without the streetlight glare of civilisation, the sounds of breaking glass and their wild, feral shouts at obtaining some trophy of the night, increasingly got closer. It knew it would have to leave its dwelling soon, and move closer to the silence of isolation.  
As it ate, it thought more about what future lay in wait for its world, its society, and its very life. All institutions and individuals had either wilted under the strain of the sudden and complete disintegration of support mechanisms, or had degenerated into over-riding desperation for self-preservation.   
What remained of the bureaucracy aggrandised executive power at the expense of the legislature, calling on that power to maintain order at all costs, oblivious to the cruelty of daily survival amongst the ordinary citizenry. They were an inconsequential governing force, whose laws and decrees were ignored, especially by the rich whose estates loomed, deformed, over idle acreage beyond the rubble of former industrial centres.   
This tiny segment of the populace hoarded the trinkets of a dead age by hiring illegal brotherhoods of extortionists. Backed by numbers and threats of violence, these mafiosos would descend on properties demanding records of accounts and ownership, and would take possession when such records could not be produced. It was commonly known that most records were destroyed in the raids, but there was no force strong enough that could stop this grand scale looting. So unquenchable was this greed, that the grandeur of public structures crumbled as materials were quarried to enhance private domiciles.  
What was there worthy enough to save? If its world were to disintegrate into its most elemental components, of what consequence would it be to the galaxy? On its most glorious day, the minds of individuals in its society had been cluttered by trivia and gossip. Its people had wallowed in insignificance, and by so doing, had committed intellectual suicide.  
And of itself? Love. Need. Hate. Basic and elemental. Eating sewage, it turned from its own ignorance.  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER TWO  
  
CHALUS  
  
Jaina helped her twin onto his feet from the sprawl he was thrown into by Anakin's blind need to escape. Jason nodded his assurance that he was unharmed and then closed his eyes, focusing inward on something that felt as though pressure was being applied uncomfortably to either side of his skull.   
The brief physical contact between the siblings had induced an undiluted subconscious link, unusual in its substance. Jason wasn't sure what aspects of it were an accurate portrayal of Anakin's state of mind. It seemed to seep, thickly, into Jason's awareness. The imagery was completely foreign and seemed to lack any cohesion, so that he understood very little of its content.   
Putting his palms to his temples, he tried to ease the discomfort that rose in intensity as more of the link unfolded, and erected mental barriers to try to protect himself from further intrusion. As he opened his eyes, Jason saw his sister shutter slightly and then relax.   
"You saw it too?" In response, Jaina just sighed and stared at his chin. Frustrated and angry at everything that culminated in his actions in the last few days, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. She was supposed to be the strong one of the three, and now that Leia was dead --. No, not now! He would not think of his mother now. He could not lose control. He didn't want to end up like Anakin.  
"Don't shut me out, Jaina!" He shouted at her. "I need you to help me with this!"  
She silenced him with unnerving hardness in her eyes. "How?! Hmmm? How do you think I can help you with this? I don't know what those images are suppose to represent!"   
She spread her arms and shook her head in short, swift motions, as if to indicate that the universe itself was incapable of rational revelation. The timbre of her voice rose as logic eluded her. "Monstrous structures decaying in a dingy sun; blurry manuscripts or records of some sort; weird machinery -- what do they have to do with Anakin? What do they have to do with us? All three of us have never been separated. Those images are not his."  
"Then whose are they?"  
Incredulous, Jaina stared at her brother. She wasn't omniscient! She didn't have all the answers! She wondered about all the times he nodded sagely to what she told him, probably not understanding a word, but being happy like that. Was she now supposed to replace Leia as his mother, guiding him by the hand, while he trotted along beside her in satisfied blindness?   
She didn't have time to baby-sit her twin; she had her own problems to work out. Thrusting her face to within centimetres of his, she spat, "You figure it out for once!"  
  
* * *  
  
Fastening her jacket around her chin, Jaina shivered slightly at the chill in the air. Hitting the release switch, the platform rose behind her, closing off the ship's interior lights and leaving her in silvery slits of exterior illumination. She adjusted the position of her lightsaber on her belt, and with a fast paced walk, submerged into the night.  
The city around her was dark and still. Jaina wanted the same phenomena for her mind. Her mood darkened as she considered her own words. They were as much for herself as they were for Jason. She felt that somehow, at the root of it all was their mother.   
Anakin had been in either Luke or Leia's mind at the time of their death; of this, Jaina was certain. One of the first visuals that clouded her sight when she touched her younger brother was a sickening image of their cremation.   
Days ago, at a crucial moment in the war, as the young Jedi congealed in the Force, their combined conjuring of a wall of heat surged and swarmed in a purposeful direction to consume Luke. Leia's deliberate proximity to him had resulted in her own agonising death.  
Hours before, while the Jedi Team conducted a rescue of the crew of a downed corvette, one of Rasianar's flagitious weapons had attacked Leia. The self-rendering machine had plucked the image of Luke from her mind to use against her; her twin brother, not her husband.   
In the moments of haze before her mother regained consciousness after the assault, when the shields that guarded her private thoughts were at their weakest, Jaina had probed her mind. What she saw there sickened her, and formed an undying hatred of Leia's breach of the laws of national culture, and of the betrayal of her family.   
It was something she could never forgive her mother for.  
When President Tevv's orders came through, calling for the only proven method of destroying these vile implements of war, Jaina acted out of anger and turned the orders into something personal.   
At the time, she believed she could live with that. Because of it, somewhere along the line, she had broken from herself. This irrational, enraged thing that wore her face was a callow actor in a muddled play. The Jaina she really was, was somewhere else.   
An hysterical, satirical little giggle escaped her lips as she wondered how far she would have to walk to find this real, three-dimensional self; this granddaughter of last Prince of Alderaan, and of the blackest Lord of the Sith; this daughter of a legend, the incomparable paragon of virtue, Leia Organa-Solo.  
  
To those who relinquished the sun to labour under the moon, the steady clicks of boots marking a passage along the pavement, rising and fading past their shops, were all that interrupted the silence. To Jaina, unintelligible muttering and crying intensified and rioted through her mind, deadening anything her ears picked up.   
Her head pounded with the effort to dissolve the link, but still the voices clung to her. They clamoured to meld with something essential, something forfeited over millennia as punishment.   
"Help me! S-Someone, please." Her voice chorused, the clicking of her boots faltering.   
She would lose her sanity if she could not force a separation. Leaning for support against the coolness of the wall, she felt herself falling, drowning under the weight of the link. Then her mind shut down.   
  
* * *  
  
Jason watched her leave, and stood for a moment in the empty corridor. Now, without responsibilities to anyone or anything else, he could grapple with his Self; but, he didn't think he was capable of it.   
His whole life had been decided for him. All he had to do was follow the directions. It was a relief, actually. He didn't have to strain for years trying to figure out who he was and what profession suited his place in the universe. If that was the case, he'd probably discover in mid-life that his first assumption of identity was inaccurate and that he had wasted decades climbing the wrong ladder.  
He was who he was because of a trick of birth. He was the son of the most powerful and popular member of the New Republic. That defined his place in the social hierarchy of his culture. Because he was genetically Force-sensitive, it was expected that he would enrol in his Uncle's Academy and become a Jedi Knight. That defined his profession. There. Easy.  
But it wasn't what he wanted.  
Nothing made sense anymore! He had used his abilities as a Jedi Knight, and his mother was dead because of it! Because of him!   
There was no way to detect these nightmarish machines other than using a Jedi mind probe, but there weren't enough Jedi, and there was no way to warn anyone of the danger. How many perished while listening to a Senator suddenly incite chaos; or arguing against the abrupt irrationality of a teacher; or trying to diffuse the inconsistent behaviour of a neighbour; or calm the bizarre menace of a father?  
The blast that was sent through the Force sought and destroyed those things with very specific brain signatures, but how many innocents died like his mother, because they obviously stood too close to one of those grotesque weapons?  
Left alone with unimaginable guilt and grief, his mind writhed in the link to something horrible. He slid to the floor. It was too powerful, too rooted in age to be dismissed, and Jason was too weak with trauma to recover from its infestation.  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER THREE  
  
Pain! All he could hear was the sound of tears; an eternity of loss, inconsolable in its depth of duration. There were so many voices that it seemed as though the universe itself wailed in agony.   
The lids of his eyes clenched together in spasms. He couldn't live with the grief and despair of so many. He couldn't live with his own losses.  
The rays of the moon exposed his naked, shaking soul, and his head fell back in moans of pain. He had to get to -- what day had they died? Friday. Yes, Friday -- an apple tree.  
Wood from its branches would help him to cast a circle. Contained within the circle, he would be safe! He would find the wisdom to silence his mind, and then he could rest.  
He was born on a Friday, wasn't he? Friday was the colour of a field of grass just before sunset, and the colour of warm water over white sand. The solitude of a beach to walk on. The steady rhythm of the ocean cascading through his mind, with the horizon forever before him.  
What day was it now? Sunday. Why did he know this and little else? The proper day to heal, it was. He needed something orange or yellow. Lemon to burn. But birch was the tree associated with Sunday. Did he need to purify himself? Didn't his parents die under a myrtle tree, an am feasd rood? Immortality, death, resurrection ... unlawful love. He would find peace there, if he could just concentrate on the link in the moments before the others overpowered him.   
Uncertain of the direction, he wandered through the darkness with everything moving through him in deepening anarchy and hostility. What separated order from chaos, and life from death parted to reveal pure terror. He orbited a spiralling abyss of liquid ebony, gravitating inexorably toward oblivion.  
Poised at the end of a crevice, the night had found him crouching. In a terrorised panic, he had tried to flee the ruthless, purposeful pounding of some frightful fiend that shadowed his every step. The stench of unconsumed sulphur and rotting flesh uprooted his stomach and oozed into every pore.   
He flinched at a membranous touch that brushed past his face. Something cold and damp seized his neck, and he plunged, shrieking into sunless depths.  
An immeasurable confusion of time passed before Anakin found himself rolling in impenetrable blackness, transfixed to a lake of blasted vegetation. Meaningless words shouted for acknowledgement. Through the noise, in the distance, he thought he heard the disturbed clatter of something horrible drawing near.  
Abruptly, the clamour stopped, and an unnerving quiet hovered. From above him, a rasping voice sweetly rung his name in three plaintive notes: "An-a-kin!"  
Oh, gods! It recognised him!  
He knew that if he did not awake and rise, he would decay here; but, his feet felt like they were burning and he could not move.  
  
* * *  
The burning, bloated mass glared from the ethereal sky; its warm countenance blistered with time, moving shadows as it sought him out. Enclosed within the realm of time, the whimpering that feasted on his mind's slumber paused, hurled back into bottomless perdition. Forgotten.  
The hilt of his sword felt warm against his side. With an effort, Anakin pushed himself up from the harsh bed of the forest floor. Pulling the Jedi weapon free from his belt, he ignited it and stared in fascination at the light of the blade. As he stared, he struggled to remember something from a long time ago, before the isolation and obscurity.   
The unique colour of each lightsaber blade was a reflection of its creator's transcendent brightness in the Force. The voices -- they were once clothed as such, changed now in outward lustre and ruined in equal misery; devoid of hope.  
Moving the sabre through basic defensive moves, Anakin closed his eyes and listened to the changing pitch of its hum. It was the sound both in and out of time: "ah", "oo", "mm". If he shut it down, the silence was the manifestation of something eternal. Its meaning was wordless.  
Touching Luke and Leia at the moment of death, he had experienced this silence, and was pulled into the eternal beyond what he could sense.  
The lightsaber was a talisman of a unity forever denied; a oneness, warm in its radiance. He was no god with his blazing sword; he was a parody whose icon slit a darkness where nothing mattered.  
The Force was -- . Anakin tried to stop the flood of realisation, but could not. The Force was what was left of the poisonous beauty of a terrifying knowledge and purpose. The ancestors of those who now called themselves Jedi, had stolen sacred records and had been cast out by their brethren because of it. Coldly objective and calculating, they had been masters of technology and science to the point of amoral, grotesque magic.  
Tremendous pressure began to squeeze either side of his skull. Anakin tried to utilise healing techniques, but the pressure only increased.  
"It was Rasianar!" He howled.   
The punishment for their crime had been the purposeful obliteration of their existence from the mouths of sentients. Stripped of mind and soul, they were reduced to a muttering mockery of sanity and order. The call of Cthulhu.   
"Kadath is Rasianar!" He screamed in revelation.   
A ruined state clouded his sky-blue eyes. It felt as though he was dying.   
  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER FOUR  
  
Huddled at the edge of what once was the city it called home, it wallowed in depression. It knew that if it did not rise out of the pit of its existence, it would decay here.   
The splendour of the city of R'lhye was a fog covered dream. Shuffling through the ruins night after night, it realised that the whole of Bàs used materialism as an artifice of control; the imposition of the illusion of order on a virulent chaos.  
Now that that means of control was disintegrated, everything it had known had crumbled to meaningless scraps. It believed itself to be a corpse that did not understand it had already died.  
Alone and tired, it saw only two choices left before it: since its spirit was dead already, it could make its body catch up to it; or, it could redefine itself. Suicide was the quicker of the two. Easier. More seductive. The more challenging of the two was the reconstruction of itself.  
Its utopia, its city in the sun, was in its juvenile fantasies. It was more enchanting than anything that had existed before. It haunted its dreams, but the city had a loveliness about it that could not be destroyed and taken away.   
It had no doubt that it would find it, all it had to do was search! It didn't see anything from its window, but maybe the golden towers sparkled somewhere over the mountains to the north.   
It was decided, then. Tonight, it would begin the quest! Soothed by an unattainable simplicity, it closed its eyes and smiled in childish delight.  
Comfortably numb in its madness, it finally found rest.  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER FIVE  
  
Anakin felt the soft coolness of a sheet tucked snugly around him. He was alive, but that was all.  
His eyes still burned with a now forgotten text, even when squeezed shut. He had seen the stolen writings that had long since decayed to dust, despite the immortality of the words.  
He breathed in the intoxicating incense of the past: the lubricants of the freighter on his father's shirt; the circles under his mother's eyes; his uncle's robed facelessness, concealing monstrous inner secrets. In his heart, something stirred and uncoiled.  
Brutally, Anakin realised that Luke knew that the Jedi were a mirage of a truth that only existed in dreams lost from memory. The Force was an artifice of control, the imposition of the illusion of order on a virulent chaos. The cost of this order was the erasure of origins that even now demanded recognition through assimilation. Sanctified in ritual, clothed in extinct notions of chivalry, all that he was -- all that Anakin believed in -- was a lie.  
"Luke, why didn't you tell me!"   
The only sound was the electronic ticks that marked the beating of his heart. He wondered how long it could continue like that, foolishly counting out mortality; a constant reminder of time. That was were he existed, in the realm of time where all things would die. The affairs of eternity were not his, but now that they were known, he couldn't simply hurl them into oblivion. He wasn't the same anymore. He couldn't live in the same way.  
Maybe Luke had known about the Ancient Ones as far back as the time of the revelation of his direct ancestry over Bespin. To a certain extent, Darth Vader was an incarnation of their cold remorselessness; but both he and the Emperor were much more recognisable by their motivation of greed. What motivated the others was too far removed from human thought to understand.  
His mother said that Luke was almost unrecognisable when he regained consciousness on the medical frigate after the first, direct confrontation with his father. From that moment on, he grew more distant and sought isolation whenever he could. Only his love for his family and friends allowed him to continue to walk with them. It seemed the same hopeless existence awaited Anakin.  
A medical technician, carrying a test container, entered the room and interrupted the train of thought. Maybe such an interruption was needed. He had to start thinking of something else.  
"Good morning, Mr. Solo."   
Anakin smirked. 'Mister Solo', indeed. He'd only heard his father addressed that way. He wasn't old enough for such formality.  
"I'm just going to run a few tests," the technician advised. "This won't take long."  
As he began to take blood samples, he continued to chatter about intentionally neutral subjects. The doctor would be in to discuss his condition that afternoon. The weather was unusually cold and damp for this time of year. A favourite character had been caught in yet another scheme in a popular holo-vid sitcom. About this last topic, Anakin had watched a few episodes of the comic drama, but thought it was too formulaic and repetitious for his liking.  
Just when he started to lose patience with the incessant prattle, the tests were completed and the technician began to gather the equipment to leave.  
"Oh, one more thing," Anakin's audible sigh visibly annoyed the other man. "I just wanted to tell you that your sister and brother have been asking about you, and would like to visit."  
The thought of his siblings seeing his condition made him anxious with dread. "No, I can't see them yet. I'm not ready."  
Open vulnerability on the young man's face softened the technician's defensive temperament. Nodding his understanding, he left without saying another word.  
Exhaustion soon forced him to sleep, but Anakin's screams brought the attendants in enough times for them to dose him with Lethe. Comfortably numb, he finally could rest.  
  
  
  
  
  
CHAPTER SIX  
  
A rare smile lit Anakin's face as he watched a bird land on a branch of a flowering tree outside his window. It plucked a bud, held it in its beak for a few seconds, then dropped it. It performed this action four or five times, singing briefly after each instance, before finally finding a flower that suited its humour and flew off with it.  
He was so enamoured with the simplicity surrounding this performance, that he didn't note his siblings' entrance. A soft, warm hand tentatively touched his arm, and he started at the contact.  
"I know you wanted to be alone for a while," Jaina said softly, "but it's been two weeks since we last saw you and we were worried about you."  
Anakin kept quiet and did not meet her eyes. He just wanted to fold in on himself where no one could find or touch him any more.  
After an uncomfortable silence, Jason ventured, "I know you needed privacy, so we didn't check on you through the Force."  
Anakin looked up sharply. "The Force? You don't know anything about 'the Force'! It's all a lie!"  
The twins looked at each other in alarm and confusion. Seeing what passed between them, the younger sibling, upset at restraining aeons worth of hell, exploded.  
"There's no such thing as Jedi! Haven't you figured that out, yet?! You saw the same things I did in the link! All these amazing effects are just pathetic leftovers from what we once were."  
"I don't think we had the same experience," Jason contradicted. "While I saw a few things, the most powerful part of the link was the voices. They crushed what was me and tried to take over."  
Jaina nodded in confirmation, and continued, "What was the same for all three of us was that this attempted coup triggered something that produced a coma. The only difference is that, maybe because Jason and I weren't the primary participants in the link, it dissolved while in that state. Since you were directly linked, it managed to stay with you somehow. I don't know. I'm not an expert in links."  
"This 'trigger' is genetic," Anakin explained more calmly. "It was put there by someone to prevent direct assimilation. If it was by whoever condemned our ancestors, then it was part of the punishment; but if it was by our ancestors, then maybe there was a faction that actually had a conscience and wanted to forget what they had done."  
Jason shook his head and shrugged his incomprehension at where this confession was leading. "How do you know all this?"  
Agitated into a rage, Anakin shouted, "Because I saw it all happen! I was there!  
Our ancestors were monsters, condemned because they were too poisonous to exist in the universe! Over time, each generation forgot to tell the next one about that little bit of history, until eventually the Jedi became the guardians of peace and freedom! Peace and freedom! What a joke! A bunch of unrepentant freaks entrusted to maintain order and sanity!"  
Emptying everything, he moaned, "We're just corpses who've been reanimated with assumed identities."  
Jaina reached across the bed and gathered her brother into her arms. He cried deeply for a long time, leaning on the other's strength to anchor his sanity.   
She looked questioningly over Anakin's head at Jason, who indicated that their brother had calmed enough to continue drawing him out.  
"Naki? Are you all right?" She hadn't used that term of affection for years.  
"No." Was the precarious reply.   
Then he disengaged himself enough to look up at his older sister. "It's hard to deal with."  
Engulfed by his anguish, Jaina emphasised, "I think I speak for Jason when I say that we take what you say very seriously. I want to make sure you know that you are not alone in this. Ever. We'll help you as much as we can."  
"I know," he said gently. "Believe me, I don't think I could make it without your support."  
More at ease, he revealed, "I thought that what I went through was too foreign, too intense, for any psychological therapist to possibly relate to. I can't find the words to describe what I feel. Although, all aspects of the therapy have helped me to at least function on a basic level.   
"I need to create peace within myself," he recited. "And apparently the only way to do that is to reinvent who I am through what family and friends mean to me; that maybe there was some good in what I saw."  
When it seemed as though he was going to dismiss them, Jason asked, "If you're not uncomfortable telling us, what did the therapist say?"  
Anakin sighed, and stared out the window before speaking. "She talked about a miscarriage she had recently suffered through. After listening to me ramble on, she said that what she went through might put the vastness of what I experienced into something I could handle."  
Jaina looked into his eyes. "And did it?"  
He nodded. "It's interesting how the creation of life overpowers the construction of anarchy. She said that she knew she was pregnant from the third week on. She told only her husband at the time, but finally, their excitement at the long awaited event overtook their caution, and everyone knew of her condition before the end of the second month. The foetus died and was reabsorbed into her body sometime in the eighth week."  
"You mean, she didn't notice?" Jaina asked.  
"There had been no warning, no bleeding, no cramping, so that she didn't know until she went to her obstetrician for a routine check up. The doctor told her then that there was only an empty sack. That the foetus was dead."  
Somehow, this effected Jaina more than the exotic events that Anakin related of his own experience.  
"She said that because it was so early in the pregnancy, she could not see what she had lost. There was no funeral or other acknowledgement that the baby existed at all, because it had been surgically removed from her and disposed of like any other piece of diseased tissue. The therapist cried at this point. It's interesting how another's distress makes you put aside your own for a time."   
Pausing, Anakin studied his sister's unexpected reaction, then continued. "One of the most vivid things she said was that when she awoke that morning, she was a mother. By the evening of the same day, she had lost her identity. She was powerless to prevent the miscarriage, and because her baby wasn't separate from her yet, she permanently lost a part of herself when it died. To her, it died silently and unknown. She said that while others would forget its existence, she never would."  
Cautiously, Jaina asked, "Was it our ancestors who did this to us? Trying not to be forgotten?"  
He didn't answer right away, and Jaina started to worry that he'd withdrawn from them. Finally, in a small voice he said, "Not directly. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that there was an uprising amongst the condemned, and that those who desired penitence were allowed closely monitored freedom, simply because there was hope for their redemption. That group is our ancestors.  
"Those who continued to be violently ambitious remain trapped in that place." He shivered in remembered fear. "They are the ones who attacked us. I don't know how I tapped into that group."  
After a pause, Jaina speculated, "I hate to use Luke's reasoning, but he said once that the Force -- " She floundered as Jason raised an eyebrow at her. Regaining her composure, she corrected herself. "Well, Luke said that -- whatever you want to call what we can access -- was eternal, meaning that it was outside time and space. I think he said that Yoda told him that you could see other places, the future, the past, and old friends long gone."  
Jason snorted and interjected, "I don't think you'd call these guys, 'old friends'."  
Irritated, Jaina continued, "In any case, what I'm trying to say is that if time doesn't exist in the For -- let's call it the 'eternal', then it's possible that you went into a distant past and into some unexplored realm that was far removed from your own. I think you stared to follow Mom, and then got lost somehow."  
"I've done all the exploration I want of that realm," Anakin confessed, "but what you said seems to fit. I just hope that's not where Mom is now."  
Looking up at his sister, he asked, "How are you feeling about her?"  
Jaina stood and walked to the window. Since her mother's death in Luke's arms, her hatred had grown to the point where her own physical resemblance to Leia disgusted her. She hadn't used a mirror in weeks.   
Taking several deep breaths, she answered, "I was angry at her because she loved Luke more than she loved Dad. As if that wasn't disgusting enough, she turned her back on us and on what she believed in to continue that abnormal relationship. You know, I use to look up to her as a role model, and she turned out to be -- "  
"Human," Anakin intercepted. "Someone who finally did what her heart had been telling her for years."  
Furious Jaina whirled on her brother. "How can you say that? You actually admire her?"  
"Yes. She stopped doing what society told her to do and started living."  
Jaina stared at him, incredulous. After all he'd been through, was he still that naive? Rules were set for a reason. If you wanted to function in a civilisation, you had to respect codes of behaviour.  
"I don't want to hear this," Jason petitioned.  
"Denying Mom's courage for acting on what she believed in --"  
"Anakin! She was mentally sick!"  
Jason had had enough. "Stop it!" He yelled. "Both of you just shut up!"  
A technician came rushing into the room, startling its occupants. "This is a hospital. You cannot disturb other patients with your lack of discretion," she cautioned. "If you can't keep your voices down, you will be denied access to each other. Do I make myself clear?"  
All nodded their assent. With a final warning glare, she left them alone.  
Almost in a whisper, Jason announced, "I'm going to do some travelling after we get discharged."  
"Alone," he amended.  
The others stared blankly at him. He usually didn't feel like explaining himself, but this time was different. "I need some space to think and figure out what I want to do for a living."  
He shrugged slightly. "Being a Jedi Knight isn't what I want. Maybe I'll talk to Lando about going into business for myself. Being able to read people's emotions will give me a definite advantage in trade deals."  
When Jaina could find her voice, she counselled, "I don't think Lando is a good choice for an advisor. Most of his business ventures have been disasters."  
"Although, as Administer of Economics for the New Republic, he's living very comfortably now," Anakin put in. "In fact, I've heard he's been more active in his romantic life now than he ever was in the past."  
Jaina scowled as she commented, "He's attractive and all, but some people can't see past the lure of money and position. I hope he isn't taken advantage of."  
Jason chuckled. "That's one thing I can guarantee won't happen. Lando's been around the galaxy too much for that."   
Sobering, he regarded the two of them before speaking. "Look, both of you will never agree about Mom. To me, she'll always be my mother and I'll miss her as much as I miss Dad. Same with Luke."   
Addressing Jaina specifically, he told her, "If you believe that Mom was mentally sick, then think of her actions with that in mind. In other words, she wasn't responsible for whatever motivated her at the end of her life. Remember what you liked best about her, because if you keep being angry like this all the time, you'll never grieve and then you'll never get on with your life.   
"The three of us are all that's left of our family. It's important that we don't lose sight of that."  
Astonished, the other two looked at each other, then at Jason. "What you just said was remarkable," Anakin acknowledged. "You put it all in perspective. I guess I was too caught up with my own thing to see it."  
Jaina grinned and grabbed her twin in a head lock, rubbing his hair with her wrist. It was something he frequently did to her, just to tease her. "I didn't know you had it in you!"  
Muffled against her pyjamas, he admitted readily, "You know, sometimes I amaze even myself."  
  
  
the end  



End file.
